Singles Bar
The song begins with a reverb-soaked solo guitar riff, ringing, open strings coated in trebly twang — a sunny lick that sounds straight off a midcareer R.E.M. record or a recent Ryan Adams disc. A chorus of acoustics brings the riff into a countrified groove. Then a voice comes in, a guy who sounds carefree but determined, like it’s the band’s 89th take and he wants to get it right this time: Sometimes I can’t find what I want/I’m turnin’ stones to find a haunt/With a girl like you, anything is possible.
Listening to it is an exercise in both enjoying life and hating it, because it reminds you that moments of innocence and beauty do occasionally occur but are as rare as hearing a perfect song for the first time.
This one’s called “It’s My Time,” by the Someloves, a mid-’80s Australian band big enough to earn an entry in Trouser Press but largely overlooked. It was the first song that Jon Harrison posted on his local MP3 blog, Little Hits (www.little hits.com). And though I’ve searched the voluminous site pretty thoroughly, “It’s My Time” — an unabashedly sentimental and almost dunderheaded ode to self-empowerment through romantic love — is still my favorite.
Harrison is Love Garden‘s used-vinyl buyer. Just over a year ago, he debuted his song blog as a way to carry into the digital age his compulsion for sharing music — particularly the forgotten song.
Most of the tunes Harrison posts on Little Hits are tracks from vinyl singles released by obscure indie-pop artists. Sometimes their entire output consisted of one or two glorious singles and their corresponding B-sides. Browsing the site is like learning a pop history unrecorded in any book.
“Jon’s like an archaeologist trying to piece some weird doomed civilization together based on fragmentary evidence,” says local musician Chris Wagner of the band Secret Club. “A fuzzed-out guitar here, a Farfisa there … or maybe it’s more like watching Jon re-create his own family tree, since these records were personal experiences for him.”
Harrison’s accompanying notes are part of the treat. He writes with a spark that comes from his love for the crackly sound and in-your-face spirit of the rock 45.
“If I’m going to go to the trouble of putting this on the turntable just to hear one song, it better really snap my head back,” Harrison tells the Pitch. “And to me, that’s what’s really exciting about 45s, particularly from the ’60s — they have this loud, blarey, ever-so-slightly distorted sound that I just love.”
The songs on Little Hits span 30 years of maximum attempts at rock stardom by bands with forget-me-not names like the Pearly Gatecrashers, Eye Protection and the Spongetones. Then again, many of these nuggets are unpretentious, humble endeavors that lay no claim to permanence — just a couple of minutes of earthly delight.
